Humanities Network, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter 1992)

HUmaN/T'eS

nter 1992
Volume 14/Nu

New Council Members
Announced

As of March, 1992, five new members will join the
California Council for the Humanities.

Suzanne Abel-Vidor is director of Ukiah’s Grace
Hudson Museum and the Sun House, where she has
participated in the Council’s Rural Museum Con¬
sortium project. She is co-director of a new project,
also supported by the Council, that will extend the
life of the consortium and its humanities program¬
ming. She is also a host site planner for the Council’s
upcoming “Columbus and After” Chautauqua
program. Abel-Vidor holds a master’s degree in
anthropology from Brown University, where she is
also a doctoral candidate in anthropology.

Gloria Busman brings to the Council twenty years ’
experience in labor and industrial relations, most
recently serving as coordinator and acting director
of the Center for Labor Research and Education at
UCLA’s Institute of Industrial Relations. In addi¬
tion to research and writing, her work has involved
developing seminars and conferences dealing with
policy issues relevant to working women and men.
Before joining the center, she worked with various
unions as part of the National AFL-CIO staff.

Jay Mechling is professor of American studies at
the University of California, Davis. A participant in
several grants from the N ational Endowment for the
Humanities, Mechling is also a past project director
of a Council-supported program on “Northern
California as a Bio-Cultural Region.” He holds a
doctorate in American civilization from the Univer¬
sity of Pennsylvania and is currently president of the
California Folklore Society.

John Taylor is president of the Peninsula Com¬
munity Foundation in San Mateo and former presi¬
dent of the Northwest Area Foundation and
St. Paul’s First Bank System Foundation. In 1983, he
received the Minnesota Humanities Commission’s first
Distinguished Service to the Humanities Award.
Taylor holds a bachelor’s degree in English from
Saint John’s University in Minnesota and currently
serves on the Federation of State Humanities
Councils’ board.

Suzanne Abel-Vidor Gloria Busman

Richard Yarborough

Richard Yarborough is associate professor of
English at UCLA and a faculty research associate at
the university’s Center for Afro-American Studies.
In 1987, he received UCLA’s Distinguished Teach¬
ing Award. He is currently a co-editor of “The
Norton Anthology of Afro-American Literature,” to
be published by W. W. Norton. A recipient of
fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the
National Endowment for the Humanities,
Yarborough holds a doctorate in English and
American literature from Stanford University.

‘Scholars in the Schools’
Program Receives New
Support, Touches Home

The Council’s award-winning Scholars in the Schools
(SIS) program has received a new grant of approximately
$275,000 and been recognized by the U.S. Department of
Education’s National Diffusion Network as a “program of
excellence in education” for four more years (until 1 995).

Scholars in the Schools began here in California in
1977, delivering quality education in the humanities to
grades 7-12. Its various projects earned state and national
awards in areas of language, literature, and history. In
1986, the program was tested rigorously for possible
national dissemination by the U.S. Department of
Education, before it was awarded a four-year grant of a
quarter-million dollars.

In the period from 1987-1991 the project, under its
director and originator, Dr. Ann M. Pescatello (former
Special Projects Officer of the CCH) was disseminated
successfully throughout 12 states and territories. In the
coming four years, it will add to that dissemination total.
And, for the first time in seven years, new SIS programs in
California will make an appearance.

Pescatello has recently met with interested parties in
southern California and has under discussion the possi¬
bilities of developing pilot programs that will attempt to
provide closer collaboration in the community college
system, and also develop a pilot program for elementary
grades.

The SIS program places humanities scholars in second¬
ary schools for long-term residencies (60-100 days during
the 1 80-day school year) for a one-to-three year period.
These scholars work with a team of teachers in each school
site to bring about systemic change; the program is not one
of enrichment. SIS has key elements which should be
integral to every SIS project, yet is flexible so that it
responds to local needs and requirements.

The SIS partnership brings about improvement in the
quality of humanities education by enhancing the profes¬
sionalism of teachers, but the program also develops
interaction among teachers, students, parents, and the
community. It seeks particularly to target the average or
mainstream student who may or may not proceed to
college. Finally, the program has been successfully repli¬
cated in a variety of urban, rural, suburban areas and in a
variety of geographic and demographic settings.

If you are interested in further information about the
project, please contact Dr. Ann Pescatello, Director,
Scholars in the Schools, 865 Euclid Avenue, Berkeley,
CA 94708(510/525-9611).

Offiers chosen for the coming two years

March will also see new officers in place. They are John K. Roth as Chair, Vicki L. Ruiz as Vice Chair,
and Jerry Bathke as Treasurer.

John K. Roth

Vicki L. Ruiz

Jerry Bathke

QUE SERA, CERA?

by Jeannie Mac Gregor

Program Officer, California Council

for the Humanities

“CERA” is not a misspelling of the lyrics to the song Doris
Day made popular in the late fifties. It’s the acronym for
the recently funded California Exhibition Resources
Alliance. It’s a consortium of small museums in mostly
rural areas of the state, to which the Council recently
awarded a Humanities Resources grant to support orga¬
nizational development. It’s an ongoing statewide coop¬
erative of small museums that share, or “block book,”
exhibits from the Smithsonian, (Smithsonian Institution
Traveling Exhibition Service, or SITES), and other
sources, including future exhibits to be developed through
the consortium members themselves.

Currently six in number, this group of museums was
originally part of the Rural Museum Consortium, an idea
conceived and launched by Caitlin Croughan, former
Associate Director at the California Council for the
Humanities. Under a grant from the L. J. Skaggs and Mary
C. Skaggs Foundation with matching funds from the
Council, the group booked three Smithsonian exhibits to
travel to ten museums statewide over a period of two
years, beginning in March 1990 and concluding in May
1 992. The three exhibits selected for the first phase of the
consortium’s history were the architecturally focused
“What Style Is It?”; “Family Folklore,” which looks at the
varied ways families preserve their shared experiences;
and “Official Images: New Deal Photography,” an exhibit
of documentary photography from the Depression era.
The California museums then planned their own program¬
ming, bringing in local photos and other materials to,
supplement each of the three exhibits. Council funding
enabled scholars to write monographs and hold public
symposia for each exhibit, further enhancing the experi¬
ence for local participants.

This project continues now under the leadership of
project co-directors, Suzanne Abel-Vidor, Director of the
Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, and Jackie Lowe,
Director of Community Memorial Museum of Sutter
County in Yuba City. The four other museum members
included in CERA at present are Claudia Israel, Director
of the Clarke Memorial Museum in Eureka, and Dianne
Wilkinson, Director of the Chico Museum, in the North;
Andrea Metz, Merced Courthouse Museum Director, who
serves as outreach coordinator for the Central Valley
region; and Theresa Hanley, Ontario Museum of History
and Art, who serves that role in the southern part of the
state. The CERA Coordinator is Amy Schoap, who will
be working under the supervision of Jackie Lowe in Y uba
City (916/741-7141). Gail Kaplan, Project Director at
SITES, will continue to work with CERA as liaison with
the Smithsonian.

This group has already been recognized by SITES for
the highly effective and creative humanities programming
that has accompanied its exhibits. During its next phase,
assessment, program planning, fundraising, and
grantwriting will take place, toward the ultimate goal of
creating a thriving, self-sustaining organization with
statewide membership.

With beginnings like this, CERA is certainly a group to
watch. These museum members are dynamic, creative,
resourceful leaders who no doubt will continue to
create a model for innovative consortium building
among small museums. Congratulations, CERA! What
will be, will be. . . great!

Left: While planning the “Family Folklore” exhibit in Merced, museum director Andrea Metz located these clay
figurines of family members made by Adelaide Barcelon Martin of Los Banos. Photo by Roger J. Wyan,
Merced Sun-Star. Right: Dorothea Lange took this “official image’’of a migrant worker in Exeter, Tulare
County, 1936 (photo courtesy of Library of Congress).

Bringing SITES to Rural Audiences

Suzanne Abel-Vidor, director of the Grace Hudson
Museum in Ukiah and co-project director of CERA,
recently prepared an article for future publication in
‘‘Siteline,” the SITES newsletter, in which she
described the origins and value of the consortium.
Included below are excerpts from her article :

Back in early 1988, I was privileged to be one of
fifteen museum directors invited by then-Associate
Director of the California Council for the Humanities,
Caitlin Croughan, to join her nascent “Rural Museums
Consortium.” She already had enlisted SITES’ Carol
G. Harsch as a collaborator in this creative conspiracy
to assure that participating museums would “never be
the same.” Caitlin made clear from the outset that
although she would be writing the grant to the L. J.
Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation, and that CCH
would provide the matching funds to allow this won¬
derful tour to happen, there was to be no ‘free lunch’ in
this program: a great deal of intellectual and organi¬
zational responsibility lay on all of us.

The easy part was the “kid in the candy shop” phase -
the selecting of SITES exhibitions that were potentially
interesting to local audiences, the right mix of reason¬
ably affordable, limited security, and available within
the time frame we were discussing (1990-1992).
Actually, that discussion was pretty interesting, be¬
cause it led us on a search for common ground. I think
it was somewhat surprising to Caitlin and to Carol
Harsh, because they didn’t really understand some of
the differences between more rural audiences and the
urban audiences that most SITES shows seem to travel
to. We finally settled on the architecture, folklore, and
Depression shows because each one could be linked to
local experiences and local cultural landscapes.

The next phase was a little trickier. We had to think
and plan farther ahead than most similar museums are
accustomed to thinking and planning, just to come up
with a viable schedule for block-booking three suc¬
cessive SITES exhibitions in California. That was a
pretty mechanical exercise; nonetheless, it was broad¬
ening and professionalizing. We now find ourselves at
the Grace Hudson Museum routinely planning our
exhibition schedule 3-4 years in advance, because
traveling shows are now part of the wider picture of
balance in our program.

What was most exciting and challenging was the
necessity of conceiving and carrying out collaborative
interpretive programming. Together [with CCH] we
would come up with three ideas for scholar-centered, but
locally-based public programming that would virtually
guarantee us a large, interested audience at our
museums during the (for us) excruciatingly brief
booking period of about six weeks. . . We didn’t want
our audiences coming just to see the exotic imports
from Washington, D.C. We wanted ourpeople to come
because we had somehow miraculously succeeded in
directly relating these national exhibitions to local
historical or contemporary experience.

Many amazing and wonderful things came from the
SITES/CCH presence in each community. Museum
attendance soared. School tours multiplied. Walking
tours of historic neighborhoods attracted scores of local
residents and greatly increased consciousness of the
importance of historic preservation to the identity of a
community. Symposiums brought CCH’s consultants
together with local scholars to discuss the local
experience of the SITES exhibition themes. Books on
architectural heritage were written and published to
coincide with the arrival of “What Style Is It?” Re¬
search programs, slide talks and discussions took place
to assess the impact of New Deal programs in the host
communities. Seminars on family genealogy and the
valuing of family history and folklore were held at
museums and historical societies. At nearly every
museum, and in many other locations, complementary
exhibits were developed and mounted. Everywhere,
museum directors reached out to community colleges,
libraries, service clubs, schools, newspapers, local
governments, historical groups and other museums to
create a whole educational program that truly was
greater than the sum of its parts. Most of us, by the way,
have professional staffs of two or less.

Not the least of the benefits of the Rural Museum
Consortium was the getting to know each other, and
each other ’s museums as part of it. California is a Very
Big State. It’s awfully hard to feel that you’re part of a
professional community unless you have plenty of
travel money and dues and subscription funds in your
budget. Most of us don’t. CCH not only brought us
together, it made us into an interest group, a network
with very real potential for self-perpetuation.

2

Melon harvesters in Firebaugh, from the “Seeing the Invisible” project (photo by Bill Gillette). The exhibit and
accompanying readings and discussions have been presented in more than a dozen towns throughout the
Central Valley.

Seeing the Invisible:

Mega-Farms and the Rural Communities of California

Because the vast majority of the photoexhibit addresses
the working and living conditions of farm workers, the
easiest audiences are those groups working on behalf of
farm workers or Hispanics generally. One of the most
interesting discoveries of this project has been the response
of many white-collar and professional Hispanics, who
recognize their fathers’ likeness or their own childhood
field experiences in the images, who are shocked at the
lack of change in conditions, who are shocked at the
distance at which they find themselves (and sometimes
also the closeness, resisting the reattachment of the
farmworker label and the stigma it carries). Many who are
now parents themselves start to unravel their concerns
about their children, and the kids ’ lack of awareness about
money and what it takes to earn it; they also express
concerns about their value systems, and whether anything
will remain in them of the values the parents carry from
their parents, their culture, and the life of work. The
documentary photographs convey the situation of farm
workers and their living conditions with a kind of
emphatic, irrefutable truth. The poems and writings, on the
other hand, melt the boundaries we erect to keep ourselves
separate from it, and then make us glad for their
dissolution.

by Trudy Wischemann, Project Director

Editor’ s Note: Since receiving a grant under the
Council’s “Environment and the Common Good"
initiative in 1990, Trudy Wischemann has
presented a traveling photographic exhibit about
California’ s farm workers, along with
accompanying poetry readings and talks in more
than a dozen locations throughout the Central
Valley. These programs have explored issues of
agriculture and the common good, considering
the ways that our cultural patterns of land
tenure affect the environment and the people
who make their living from it.

It is my contention that not only is our dependence on a
food system built on subjugation bad for the social soul,
but also that the guilt it produces blocks our understanding
of our real interdependence, and the whole concept of the
common good. The purpose of the project, then, is to
explore the relationship between agriculture and the
common good by bringing together humanists and other
scholars with the people of rural California, to unite
scholarship with lived reality in the hope of supporting
what writer Gerald Haslam has named “The Other Cali¬
fornia,” and to find, describe, and convey that positive link
between the environment and humanity. . .

Probably the most important area of progress has been
learning that the process of planning the community
events was itself part of the project. Initially, I had imag¬
ined that we would design a generic event, work with key
people in roughly 10 communities to stage these events
and attract an audience, and that this would bring together
the various constituencies of the rural areas and promote
discussion. I had it exactly backwards, which is something
I have learned from trying to do it in the initial sequence.
In order to reach that desired goal -talk- what is actually
required is first contacting organizations or groups of those
constituencies, finding the key people, and then working
with them to design a specific event that addresses the
needs and immediate concerns of each community. Only
then can we draw the discussion into the more long-term
and philosophical question of the common good and its
relationship to agriculture. Learning this has cost me a few
months’ time, but we have gained in efficacy as a result.

There are two things that make this new process
necessary and good. One is understanding that the divi¬
sions between the main constituencies in the Central
Valley-farmers, farmworkers and townspeople- are real,
made up of historical events and structural realities that put
people in competition for increasingly scarce resources.
Finding the areas of interdependence is possible only after
honoring those divisive realities and the people who live
them. Luckily, this brings us closer to understanding the
whole. The second is a cultural phenomenon, discovering
that the concept of “exchange” still has meaning and value
in rural communities, and that to respect that value means
operating in such a way so that people know you do not ask
them for something without offering something in return,
and that no one will be asked to give amounts of energy or
resources disproportionate to their ability or their self-
interest. Operationally, this means working with people on
their terms, and negotiating the space between theirs and
my own. The magic of that, however, is that the process of
a first-hand experience of the common good, the working
out of what it is that you and I have in common that is
worth working for.

In fact, I think the people in rural California are more
aware of their interest in the common good, what I call their
social interest, because they do not separate their lives into
tight compartments: work life and domestic life are still
more merged, and community is more of a proximate
reality than for people in urban areas. This less segmented
quality of life means that people are more easily drawn into
the question of Community, of the common good, because
it is closer to their awareness. In fact, the real opportunity
for discussing the common good in rural California comes
from the fact that the essential tension between community
and competition is closer to the surface in Merced and
Visalia than it is in Marin, for example, and so is infinitely
more accessible to discussion. What I have learned in the
first six months of this project is that once the reality of the
divisions between groups is acknowledged, and respect
for the principle of exchange is exhibited, many people are
ready to go on to the next step: to talk about the common
good, and what changes might have to occur to pro¬
mote it...

My Fifty Years Celebrate Spring
by Luis Omar Salinas

On the road, the mountains
in the distance are at rest
in a wild blue silence.

On the sides of the highway
the grape orchards unfurl
deep and green again
like a pregnant woman
gathering strength
for the time to come.

And with the passing
of each season
human life knows little
change. Forty years
in this valley,
the wind, the sun
building its altars
of salt, the rain that
holds nothing back,
and with the crop
at its peak

packing houses burn
into morning,
their many diligent
Mexican workers stacking up
the trays and hard hours
that equal their living.

I’ve heard it said
hard work ennobles
the spirit—

If that is the case,
the road to heaven
must be crowded
beyond belief.

— Follower of Dusk, 1991
Flume Press, 4 Casita, Chico, Calif.

3

DECEMBER GRANTS AWARDED

Humanities in California Life

The Ohlone: Yesterday to Tomorrow

Sponsor: C.E. Smith Museum of Anthropology,

CSU Hayward

Project Director: Lowell John Bean
Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds

About fifty independent nations known collectively as the
Ohlone Indians lived in the San Francisco and Monterey
Bay Areas long before Europeans arrived. This exhibit and
accompanying lectures will examine the Ohlone traditional
culture and its perseverance and adaptation over time,
along with Ohlone reactions to European culture. Events
begin in March of this year, extending awareness and
discussions surrounding the Columbus quincentennary.

Cahuilla Voices: We Are Still Here

Sponsor: Office of Research Affairs, UC Riverside
Project Director: Deborah Dozier
Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds

This traveling exhibit presents the stories of the Cahuilla
people and their responses to two centuries of change in
their cultural and physical environment in Southern
California’s Coachella Valley. The project will consider

1 ) the creation of the Cahuilla and their traditional culture,

2) the period since 1774, including uprisings and a devas¬
tating smallpox epidemic in the mid- 1 800s, and 3) dramatic
changes once the American government gained control of
their lands. The exhibit opens in June.

Roots in the Sand: Assimilation through
Cross-cultural Marriage

Sponsor: Imperial Valley Historical Society,
Montrose

Project Director: Jayasri M. Hart
Amount of Award: $9,346 in outright funds

This film script project looks at the Imperial Valley’s
“Mexican-Hindoo” community, which developed in the
early twentieth century when immigrant Sikhs from India’ s
Punjab married local women of Mexican descent. After
the Supreme Court decided in 1923 that the men were
Caucasian but not “white persons in the popular sense,”
their rights to hold land and marry freely were denied. The
project will consider the social concessions made to create
this bi-cultural community, as well as questions of ethnicity
and jurisprudence.

After Columbus - The Musical Journey:

A Conference on Cultural Interchange in
18th Century Imperial Spain

Sponsor: California Polytechnic State University
Foundation, San Luis Obispo
Project Director: Craig Russell
Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds

This three-day conference will focus on little-known
musical pieces from eighteenth century Imperial Spain,
now California and Mexico. Composers of both sacred
and secular music whose work will be discussed and then
performed include Hispanic, Indian, and African Ameri¬
cans. The conference is scheduled for May 1992.

California Hotel History Project

Sponsor: Oakland Community Housing, Inc.

Project Director: Paris Williams
Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds and
$1,675 in matching funds if
$3,350 is raised in outside gifts

Oakland’s historic California Hotel became a center of
African-American music and cultural life beginning in the
late 1940s, as the only full-service desegregated East Bay
Hotel. This exhibit will feature the history of popular
music and folk heroes linked with the California Hotel and
the ways in which Oakland-based Rap music carries on the
tradition. The hotel has recently been renovated by Oak¬
land Community Housing, Inc. to provide low-income
housing. The exhibit is scheduled to open in June 1992.

America Eats Out

Sponsor: Center for New American Media, Inc.,
New York City

Project Director: Louis Alvarez
Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds

The “America Eats Out” film script will document twentieth
century social forces that gave rise to new styles of public
dining. From urban self-service restaurants to drive-ins
and fast-food franchises, Americans’ eating locales have
revealed much about who we are as a people. The project
examines the effects of women’s changing role and their
entry in the labor market, along with the rise of the
automobile and America’s passion for labor-saving
devices.

Memories

Sponsor: KVIE-TV, Sacramento
Project Director: Jerry Rouillard
Amount of Award: $9, 780 in outright funds

“Memories” will explore northern California’s social his¬
tory through a four-part series of documentary scripts. Part
of an ongoing program, these four segments will focus on
themes such as railroad lumbering, prohibition, sports as
common ground, and changing traditions among rural
Chinese Americans. The project will piece together
newspaper clippings with archival footage and home
movies, and the recollections of local residents.

Sing It, When You Can’t Tell It

Sponsor: Public Interest Films, Berkeley
Project Director: Michael Fried
Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds

This film script tells the story of the Oakland Colored
Chorus, which became famous in the 1920s and 1930s for
its innovative presentations combining spirituals with
European classical music and for its many virtuoso per¬
formers. Founded by musician and scholar W. Elmer
Keeton, the company used funding from the New Deal’s
WPA to train Black people in stage skills formerly limited
to White unionists. The project will also use this story to
examine such historical issues as Black migration to
Oakland before World War n, the Improvement Movement,
and the history of race relations in northern California.

Above: Vintage photo of Oakland’s California Hotel,
long a center for African-American music and
entertainment, from the “California Hotel History
Project.” Below: Photo of boxing champion
Max Baer in 1939, from the “Memories” project,
courtesy of Melinda Peak.

Humanities Resources

California Exhibition Resources Alliance

Sponsor: Community Memorial Museum of Sutter
County, Yuba City

Project Directors: Jacqueline Lowe,

Suzanne Abel-Vidor

Amount of A ward: $10, 000 in outright funds

This project unites six rural California museums to form
“CERA,” or the California Exhibition Resources Alli¬
ance. CERA will work with member museums, the
Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and
other exhibition services to plan a multi-year schedule to
bring humanities exhibits and related public programming
to rural areas of California. (See article on page 2)

4

DECEMBER GRANTS AWARDED

This photo of a protest in the Vernon area of Los
Angeles is from the “Race and the Environment”
project.

Humanities and Contemporary
Issues

Sharing Stories: Building Bridges of Tolerance,
Understanding and Community

Sponsor: Kegley Institute of Ethics,

CSU Bakersfield

Project Director: Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley
Amount of Award: $6,000 in outright funds

This project combines a lecture and a workshop series on
multiculturalism in Kern County, using discussions about
literature, media, and oral histories to increase understand¬
ing of cultural differences among the county’s residents.
The events are scheduled for February 1992.

Political Dialogue in Participatory Democracy:
Achieving the Common Good through
Public Policy in California

Sponsor: Center for Ethics and Economic Policy,
Berkeley

Project Director: Arthur Blaustein
Amount of Award: $29,000 in matching funds if
$58,000 is raised in outside gifts

Since the revolutionary cry of “no taxation without rep¬
resentation,” Americans have seen tax decisions as es¬
sentially political in nature. This series of public workshops
for local leaders and humanities scholars will examine
California’s methods of determining tax and budgetary
priorities and the deep moral and political issues surrounding
these seemingly mundane activities. The project also
includes an interactive video script that will examine the
impact of tax decisions on Californians. Workshops will
be held in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and the
Central Valley between March and September 1992.

Race and the Environment

Sponsor: Third Image Film and Video,

San Francisco
Project Director: Mike Lee
Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds

“Race and the Environment” profiles the emerging envi¬
ronmental justice movement, examining how and why
communities of color in the United States bear the brunt of
environmental hazards and neglect. The film script project
also looks at the similarities and links among mainstream
environmental group efforts and those of Black, Hispanic,
and Asian Pacific Americans who fight the effects of toxic
dump sites, incinerators, freeways, and factories in their
neighborhoods.

Common Heritage: The Public Trust Doc¬
trine and Mono Lake.

Sponsor: Mono Lake Foundation, Lee Vining
Project Director: Stephen Fisher
Amount of Award: $7,500 in outright funds

This half-hour documentary script will look at the issues
surrounding the continuing Mono Lake court case, as well
as how they relate to the Public Trust Doctrine established
by the California Supreme Court in 1983. This complex
doctrine provides a means to balance public interest and
private benefit and states that navigable waters, their beds
and their banks belong to the public as part of its natural
heritage. Representing a variety of perspectives, the pro¬
gram will seek to promote public understanding of the
increasingly applied doctrine and its implications for
California’s water resource management.

Remember Tomorrow: Ten Americans
Confront the Year 2000

Sponsor: Film Arts Foundation, San Francisco
Project Director: Michael Katz
Amount of A ward: $10, 000

This film script will explore “The Year 2000” as symbol
of the future, along with the particular predictions and
hopes that some Californians hold for the coming millen¬
nium. The interviews reveal a range of views about
technology and social choices in solving human problems,
from optimistic anticipation to apocalyptic dread. The
project also includes predictions of future life made during
the mid-twentieth century and 100 years ago.

The Lottery

Sponsor: Film Arts Foundation, San Francisco

Project Director: Ken Jacobson

Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds

From the Civil War through the Vietnam era, the lottery
system has been used to determine which Americans
would be sent to fight. This film script project focuses on
the 1969 draft lottery: its design, implementation, histori¬
cal antecedents, and its cultural and political context. “The
Lottery ’’will raise questions about the role of fate, personal
choice and governmental authority in a democratic
society.

You Can’t Count the Beauty of the Mountains:
The Life and Times of Robert S. McNamara

Sponsor: UC Berkeley Graduate School of
Journalism

Project Director: Andrew A. Stern
Amount of Award: $9,950 in outright funds

This film script considers the public career of Robert S.
McNamara, the former “whiz kid” and president of Ford
Motor Company who became Secretary of Defense in the
Kennedy and Johnson administrations and, later, president
of the World Bank. The project will examine his in¬
volvement in conducting the V ietnam W ar and expanding
America’s nuclear weapons arsenal, as well as his own
views about his life and career. Originally from California,
McNamara has attributed his decisions to a faith in ra¬
tionality and moral values he acquired as a youth.

Humanities for Californians

East Meets West: Buddhism in the
United States

Sponsor: KPFA-FM/Pacifica Radio, Berkeley
Project Directors: Sue Supriano, Pamela Michael
Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds

California has the largest number of Buddhist centers and
teachers in America, a number that is growing rapidly with
Asian immigration. This five-part radio script develop¬
ment project will explore Buddhism’s traditional beliefs
and practices, its history in America, and contemporary
changes. The programs will also consider issues such as
social activism among Buddhists, changing women’s
roles, and cross-pollination among Buddhism, Judaism,
and Christianity.

Objects of Myth and Memory

Sponsor: Oakland Museum
Project Director: Carey Caldwell
Amount of A ward: $ 1 0, 000 in outright funds and
$10,000 in matching funds if
$20,000 is raised in outside gifts

This project brings a major exhibit of Native American arts
from the Brooklyn Museum, whose ethnologist R. Stew¬
ard Culin collected more than 9,000 objects in the early
twentieth century. The exhibit and related symposia will
consider how the process of collecting changes the mean¬
ing and value of objects, along with the role that museums
play in interpreting cultural objects. The exhibit opens in
February 1992.

Walt Whitman Facing West

Sponsor: School of Arts & Humanities,

CSU Fresno Foundation
Project Directors.Jerome Loving,

Carol Zapata Whelan
Amount of Award: $9,933 in outright funds

One hundred years after his death, Walt Whitman’s poetry
and democratic themes will be the subject of a conference
and dramatic portrayal by scholar Carrol Peterson. The
events will bring together local poets and scholars to
consider Whitman’s legacy, both in the United States and
abroad. Events are scheduled in late March 1992.

5

L

DECEMBER GRANTS AWARDED

A Critical Look at Cultural Representation
in the Media

Sponsor: National Educational Film & Video
Festival, Oakland
Project Director: Ronald Light
Amount of A ward: $3, 500 in outright funds and
$1 1,000 in matching funds if
$22,000 is raised in outside gifts

This symposium and related programs will consider the
history of visual documentation of the “other,” particularly
the photography and ethnographic records of Edward S.
Curtis and other tum-of-the-century photographers whose
work created images of Native Americans. Part of the 1992
National Educational Film & Video Festival in May, the
program will include presentations of nonfiction films and
videos by or about American Indians.

What’s Past is Prologue

Sponsor: Sacramento Theatre Company

Project Director: Mark Cuddy

Amount of Award: $5,940 in outright funds

The project’s discussions and essays will accompany
upcoming plays about life in America during the past three
decades, exploring aspects of the works’ historical, ethical
and literary context. The plays include Fifth of July by
Lanford Wilson, Latins Anonymous by Luisa Leschen,
Armando Molina, Rick Najera, and Diane Rodriguez, and
At the Still Point by Jordan Roberts. Programs are sched¬
uled from January through May 1992.

Legacy of African-American Music:

Religious and Secular

Sponsor: Young Saints Scholarship Foundation,

Los Angeles

Project Director: Thomas S. Roberts
Amount of Award: $7,500 in outright funds

This symposium will explore African influences in musi¬
cal forms including religious, Euro-classical, blues, jazz,
folk, and rap, along with African-Latino connections such
as “Los Negritos” traditions in Mexico and Afro-Latino
Caribbean music. Scheduled topics include “Musical Cre¬
ativity in the Context of Slavery,” “Storytelling and
Music: Is Rap New?” and “Jazz: The African-American
Classical Tradition.” A variety of performances will be
accompanied by mini-lectures and printed materials in
English and Spanish. The symposium will take place on
February 1, 1992.

Symposium on Classical Chinese Furniture

Sponsor: San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum
Project Director: J. Weldon Smith
Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds

Simple and elegant in design, Chinese furniture of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was assembled with¬
out nails, screws or glue. This project will explore the
classical furniture styles and the culture that produced
them, as well as the ongoing impact and appeal of Ming
design. The symposium, accompanying an exhibit of the
same name, is scheduled for fall 1992.

Choreographing History: Conference/
Performance/ Discussion

Sponsor: Center for Ideas and Society,

UC Riverside

Project Directors: Bernd Magnus, Susan Foster
Amount of Award: $10,000 in outright funds

This conference with performances will explore ways to
discuss and understand dance as a reflection of cultural
attitudes and individual identity. Issues to be addressed
include the reconstruction of historical dances, for which
little or no documentation may exist, and the relationship
of dance as a cultural practice to other practices in a given
society. The conference is presented in collaboration with
the California Museum of Photography’s exhibitions on
dance photography and dance video. Events are scheduled
in mid-February 1992.

Hispanic Culture and Film

Sponsor: Palm Springs International Film Festival

Project Director: Clara DiFelice

Amount of Award: $9,200 in outright funds

This symposium accompanying the January 1992 Palm
Springs International Film Festival considers the roots of
past and present ethnic stereotyping in films as well as
alternative perspectives, bringing together Latino film¬
makers, scholars, and members of the public.

Dissemination of the
Humanities

ATolowa Story

Sponsor: Film History Foundation, San Francisco

Project Director: James S. Culp

Amount of Award: $7,500 in matching funds if

$15,000 is raised in outside gifts

This film project looks at northwestern California’ s White-
Indian contact and conflict through the eyes of Amelia
Brown, a Tolowa centenarian who guides a young man
named Loren in the “Tolowa Way.” The story includes the
group’s struggle to maintain its language and to regain its
tribal status, which the U.S. government ceased to recog¬
nize in the 1 950s. This project previously received a script
development award from the Council.

La Charreada Mexicana:

Constructing Identity across Borders

Sponsor: Regents of University of California,

Santa Cruz

Project Director: Olga Najera-Ramirez
Amount of Award: $10,000 in matching funds if
$20,000 is raised in outside gifts

Popular in Mexico since the seventeenth century, the
charreada or rodeo, has also taken root in the San Francisco
Bay Area. This video project will look at its meaning for
the Mexican- American communities where the rodeo and
its musical and other entertainment traditions thrive, as
well as the emergence of charreada events in the small
town of Sunol, California.

“Regret to Inform” project participants Barbara
Sonneborn and Kathy Brew. In February they plan
to interview war widows in Vietnam, 24 years
after Sonneborn’s husband was killed there.

Photo by Alain McLaughlin.

Regret to Inform:

(A Woman’s View of War)

Sponsor: Film Arts Foundation, San Francisco
Project Director: Barbara Sonneborn
Amount of Award: $30, 100 in matching funds if

$60,200 is raised in outside gifts

Many Vietnam War widows have lived with their loss in
isolation and silence, but this film project seeks to pull
together their stories and their wisdom. The film includes
interviews with American and Vietnamese widows, as
well as women whose husbands returned from the war but
later died from related physical or emotional injuries. It
also looks at historical and artistic interpretations of war
and the suffering it causes, as well as the role that women
have played in creating a heroic view of war.

Prophet from the Past:

The Life and Wprk of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Sponsor: New York Foundation for the Arts,

New York City

Project Director: Diane Hendrix

Amount of A ward: $25, 000 in matching funds if

$50,000 is raised in outside gifts

Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her masterpiece.
Women and Economics, in 1 898. At a time when corseted
middle class women were instructed to be angels of the
home and leave the work place to men, Gilman espoused
economic and intellectual independence. A descendent of
New England reformers and a great niece of Harriet
Beecher Stowe, she moved west to California and crusaded
for women’s full social participation and self-determination.
This film project will also examine her life and writings as
they relate to the period marked by the rise of many reform
movements, including women’s rights groups and social
Darwinism.

6

HUMANITIES CALENDAR

Please note: These dates and times should be
confirmed with local sponsors. These listings are
often provided to the Council well before final
arrangements are made.

EXHIBITS

Through “Official Images: New Deal Photo-

Feb. 9 graphy,” an exhibit from the

Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling
Exhibition Service, will appear at the
Redding Museum and Art Center, 56
Quartzhill Road, Redding. 916/225-4155

Through “Temple, Tomb, and Dwelling:

Mar. 1 Egyptian Antiquities form the Harer

Family Trust Collection” is an exhibit
at the University Art Gallery of CSU,

San Bernardino, and also at the San
Bernardino County Museum. This
exhibit includes a lecture series.

Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.,
Tuesday through Saturday, and from
1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays. 714/880-5802
(Richard Johnson)

Feb. 21,22 “Sharing Stories: Building Bridges of
Tolerance, Understanding and Com¬
munity” combines a lecture and
workshops on multiculturalism in Kern
County. At CSU Bakersfield.
805/664-2249

Feb. 22 “Traditional Japanese Buddhist Life
East and West” sponsored by the
Japanese American Cultural and
Community Center will open with a
reception and panel at the Pacific Asia
Museum in Pasadena. The reception will
be held from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., and the
panel follows. 213/829-6002
(Don Farber)

Feb. 24 “Dialogue: The Dramatic work as
Historical/Cultural Document”

presents the last of five lectures
preceding the play Ruby’s Bucket of
Blood by Julie Hebert. At the Lyceum
Theatre, Horton Plaza, San Diego. Call
Kirsten Brandt for more information at
619/231-3586; 619/235-8025 for tickets.

Through “Ladies of Good Social Standing”

Mar. 15 exhibition will explore the social history
of the Kingsley Art Club, which
celebrates its 100th anniversary in 1992.
At the Sacramento History Museum,

101 “I” Street, Sacramento.
916/449-2057

Feb. 22 - “Official Images: New Deal Photo-
Mar. 29 graphy” exhibit travels to the Chico
Museum, 141 Salem Street, Chico.
916/891-4336

Feb. 29 - Objects of Myth and Memory” is an
May 24 exhibit of Native American arts collected
by R. Stewart Culin in the early
twentieth century. At the Oakland
Museum, 1000 Oak Street, Oakland.
510/273-3842

Feb. 29 " Objects of Myth and Memory”

sponsored by the Oakland Museum will
present a day-long symposium about
conceptual and historical aspects of
ethnological collecting and critically
examine some of the exhibition’s major
acquisitions. At the Oakland Museum,
1000 Oak Street, Oakland. 510/238-3401

Mar. 3-29 “What’s Past is Prologue” presents a
pre-performance lecture with the play
Latins Anonymous by Luisa Leschen,
Armando Molina, Rick Najera, and Diane
Rodriguez. On Mar. 22 and 29, a
discussion will follow the performance.
At the Sacramento Theatre Company,
1419 “H” Street, Sacramento.
916/446-7501

Apr. 10 - “The Ohlone Indians of the Bay Area:

Nov. 13 A Continuing Tradition” is an exhibit
about the contributions of Native
Americans past and present, at CSU
Hayward, 4047 Meiklejohn Hall. Hours
are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday - Friday
(other times may be arranged for
groups). 510/881-3104

Apr. 1 1 - “Official Images: New Deal Photo-

May 9 graphy” SITES exhibit will appear at

the San Bernardino County Museum,
2024 Orange Tree Lane, Redlands.
714/798-8570

EVENTS

Feb. 16-17 “Choreographing History” is a

conference with performances exploring
ways to discuss and understand dance as
a reflection of cultural attitudes and
individual identity. At the Riverside
Community College Auditorium.

(714) 787-3987

Mar. 20-22 “Walt Whitman Facing West” is a
symposium in conjunction with the
hundred-year anniversary of Whitman’s
death. His poetry and democratic themes
will be the subject of this conference, as
well as a dramatic portrayal by scholar
Carrol Peterson. At California State
University, Fresno. The Conference
begins Friday afternoon, March 20,
continues Saturday morning and
afternoon, and concludes on Sunday
morning. 209/278-7082
(Jerome Loving)

Apr. 21 - “What’s Past is Prologue” presents a

May 17 pre-performance lecture with the play
At the Still Point by Jordan Roberts.

The talk will explore aspects of the
play’s historical, ethical and literary
context. At the Sacramento Theatre
Company, 1419 “H” Street, Sacramento.
916/446-7501

New Grant Guidelines Published

The Council’s 1992 Guide to the Grant Program and
revised application form are now available, offering
streamlined descriptions of procedures and revised
categories for proposal submission. Grants will now fall
under either a “Public Programs’ ’ heading or “Media,” and
the applicants will no longer need to choose among
“Humanities and Contemporary Issues!’ “Humanities in
California Life,” and so forth. Funding ceilings have
also been revised. As in 1991, the deadlines for major
grant proposals will be April 1 and October 1. To
receive a copy, please write or call either Council office.

Proposal-Writing Workshops

Workshops are scheduled during February for people
interested in submitting grant proposals at the Council’s
April 1 deadline.

In San Francisco:

Wednesday, February 12, 10 a.m. to 12 noon and
Wednesday, February 19, 10 a.m. to 12 noon.
In Los Angeles:

Wednesday, February 19, 10a.m. to 12:30p.m. and
Thursday, February 20, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The workshops are free, but advance registration isrequired.
Please call the nearest Council office (415/391-1474 in
San Francisco, or2 1 2/623-5993 in Los Angeles) to register
and confirm dates.

San Diego County Hosts Bill of
Rights Programs

The Council has received a $7,500 grant from the San
Diego County Bar Foundation enabling the purchase of 50
portable exhibits entitled “To Preserve These Rights”
from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. These free¬
standing kiosks, which illustrate the nation ’ s B ill of Rights
and their application in daily life, will be placed in 50 high
schools and middle schools in the county.

With its own matching grant of $7,500, the Council has
purchased curriculum guides and 10,000 copies of a
special newspaper supplement entitled “It’s Your Right,”
which will also be distributed to the schools for use in
classes. The supplement was printed by the San Jose
Mercury News in connection with the Newspapers in
Education program.

In addition, seventeen libraries in the county will
receive free copies of the exhibit, as will the San Diego
City Hall, Superior Courthouse, and the Centro Cultural
de la Raza.

Public Humanities Meeting
Scheduled for San Diego

On February 1 3, the Council will hold a meeting on the
theme of “Humanities in the San Diego Community,”
and all interested Network readers are invited. The
meeting will be held from 9 a.m. to 12 noon at the San
Diego Historical Society, Balboa Park. To attend,
please fill out the coupon below and mail it to the
California Council for the Humanities, 312 Sutter
Street, #601, San Francisco, CA 94108.

■ Name -

| Affiliation
I Address —

Phone

U

7

312 Sutter Street 315 W. Ninth Street

COUNCIL Suite 601 Suite 1103

PQD THE San Francisco, CA 94108 Los Angeles, C A 90015

HUMANITIES 41 5 391 1474 21 3 623 5993

DON A. SCHWEITZER

FRANCISCO JIMENEZ

Acting Vice President, Academic Affairs

Associate Academic Vice-President

California State University, Fullerton

Santa Clara University

JERRY BATHKE

MICHAEL OWEN JONES

Businessman

Professor of

Los Angeles

Folklore and Mythology

UCLA

CARROLL PARROTT BLUE

Associate FYofessor of Film

SISTER KATHLEEN KELLY

San Diego State University

Dean of the Doheny Campus

Mount St. Mary’s College, Los Angeles

LINDA CROWE

System Director

JIM KENNEDY

Peninsula Library System, San Mateo

Executive Producer, News and Current Affairs

KCET, Los Angeles

LILY CUNEO

Civic Leader

PETER KLASSEN

San Francisco

Dean, School of Social Sciences

California State University, Fresno

KATHRYN WILER DABELOW

Professor of History

CATHERINE BABCOCK MAGRUDER

Pasadena City College

Artistic Director, Ukiah Players Theatre

PAUL ESPINOSA

SAMUEL MARK

Executive Producer, Public Affairs and Ethnic Issues

Assistant Vice-President, Office of Civic and Community Relations

KPBS-TV, San Diego State University

University of Southern California

KATHRYN GAEDDERT

CHARLES MUSCATINE

Director

Professor of English

Sacramento History Center

UC Berkeley

ARLEN HANSEN

JOHN K. ROTH

Professor of English

Chair, Department of Philosophy and Religion

University of the Pacific, Stockton

Claremont McKenna College

GLORIA MACIAS HARRISON

VICKI LYNN RUIZ

Chair, Division of Humanities

Associate Professor of History

San Bernardino Valley College

UC Davis

BARBARA HERMAN

PETER STANSKY

Associate Professor of Philosophy and Law

Professor of History

University of Southern California

Stanford University

STAFF

James Quay

Stan Yogi

Joanne Huddleston Ten X. Yazdi

Executive Director

Program Officer

Editor Administrative Assistant

Susan Gordon

Jeannie Mac Gregor

Rosalino Dizon Jim Humes

Associate Director

Program Officer

Grants Administrator Office Assistant

NEXT PROPOSAL DEADLINE: April 1, 1992

Proposals must conform to the 1992 Guide to the Grant Program. Send 10 copies to the

San Francisco office by the due date.

Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID

San Francisco, CA
Permit No, 11379

HUmaN/T'ES

Winter 1992
Volume 14/Number 1

Humanities in Rural California

Photo from the project “Seeing the Invisible” taken at the 1991 Cinco de
Mayo festival in Merced by Trudy Wischemann.

Inside This Issue:

Changes to the Council . page 1

‘Scholars in the Schools’ Comes Home . page 1

Reports from Rural California . page 2-3

The California Council for the Humanities is a state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities